EIA – A double edged sword
The intention behind our government’s new EIA draft is speedup the process of approval by which many projects has faced delays over the years. While those who drafted the bill themselves are aware about the damage it causes to the environment. So, it is not wrong to say that those who are in our cabinet don’t care about our environment. They are doing this to speed up the already battered economy and to stimulate the income of the government and to increase the number of jobs available for the informal workers.
The government tried to auction the coal blocks in the reserve forest regions of Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand last year. They did successfully sell those coal blocks for the both the public sector and private sectors players last year. As many of this falls under the forest areas, those projects if implemented infringes the rights of the tribal peoples because they derive their threadbare income through the forest produce from those woodlands and for which they are entitled under the forest rights act. So, they have successfully fought to stop the implementation of those projects in Orissa and some of the coal blocks in others states are also fighting those type of cases in their respective courts.
In order to curb such events from happening in the future they have included certain clauses in the new draft from which you can’t ask for details of the projects if it is termed as a project of strategic interest to our country and they have also reduced the number of days the project is open for public hearing. Even for those projects coming under public hearing they have changed the mode of meeting from the physical presence to virtual meetings. I mean given that some of those projects are in the backward regions of the country the people that are genuinely affected by those projects don’t necessarily will have the means to attend the virtual meets and they have also removed the minimum attendance required to qualify it as a meet.
This year the tiger census report said that we have more than 2900 tigers in our country and that our tiger reserves are going to reach their maximum capacity to hold those tigers in a couple of years. Given that some of those projects will fall under those tiger reserves that the human animal conflict will only increase in the future. We have the history of diseases that spreads from animals to humans because of the increased interaction between them in such conflict. There are epidemics which have spread from such conflicts in case current Covid-19 pandemic is one such example.
Even if we go ahead with such projects by silencing all the voices against it and create jobs in that manner then that won’t be an sustainable one. The opportunity cost that we have to bear with in such scenario more than the scenario in which we don’t pursue such changes.
They might say that too much public activism against such projects is the reason we came with such clauses. So, maybe we don’t have to go against every project that comes along or within the forest areas if its social damages is less.
It is wrong to think environment regulation as a roadblock for the development of the nation. This deregulation of environment for the sake of stimulating the economy have been followed recently not only in the developing countries but also in the developed nations such as USA.
Well the problems we face such as Increased income inequality, Climate change, Spread of epidemics are multinational and the response which we give back to fight them such as Opening up coal blocks are no way in close tackle them in the near future. The fate of developing nations depends upon the values it carries while carrying out its development policies and the New EIA draft is no way near such values we needed for the inclusive growth of our country.